Chopped
by Iceinherheart
Summary: Daggers where far easier to use in these circumstances. This summery sucks!


The dragon training arena was silent from the moment the words had fallen from his mouth. Astrid herself had frozen; that had been the last thing she'd have expected Fishlegs to say. It was just not sort of thing he would say, but more importantly to her, he was her friend, and the cruel words had almost stung her. The shock, she was certain, had been visible on her face, but she'd let it show - the rest of the group had seemed just as shocked as she was.

_"Astrid, do us all a favour and don't try correcting us until you have a brain larger than a Terror's nose, okay?"_

She'd been out the open door before anyone else had even tried to recover from the shock.

* * *

She didn't realise she was heading for Toothless' cove until she was already there, sliding down the stone slope on her worn shoes. Leaving Stormfly behind had seemed like a fantastic idea originally, but her muscles ached after the long walk and the extensive training Hiccup had put her through before hand. The many tumbles she'd taken due to the blur the tears had created didn't help either.

Dropping down to her knees before the lake, Astrid finally let herself think over the event. She wasn't clever; she knew that and wouldn't trick anyone into believing it either. She glared at her reflection in the lake, her hand coming up automatically to brush her hair from her face.

She didn't look like a fierce warrior. She was skinny, that her mother never failed to mention, telling her to fatten up or no man would ever want her to bare his children. This, if she was honest, had never bothered Astrid. Her mother could blather on for hours and Astrid, bored, would let her mind wonder after the first ten minuets - her mind almost always ending up reminding her that she was fine the size she was, because her weight didn't matter to her. What mattered was the way that Hiccup's skinny arms could wrap around her skinny waist and they would match, fitting perfectly. It was the only thing about them that did match.

It was only her armour that made her look bigger than she was. When she was young, Astrid had realised that she always would be a skinny girl living in a larger world, and her naive mind had decided that wearing armour would change that fact. Her armour was just something she wore now that her mind had matured and she'd realised that she didn't really mind being tiny after all.

With this in her mind, she began the tedious task of shedding her armour. She dropped both shoulder pads beside her and stood up, unsteady fingers already undoing the buckle of her armoured skirt, the red leather falling by her feet and she kicked the bundle over her shoulder pads, creating a small heap beside her. She fell down again and, after tugging her headband from her head, began to untie the bindings on her right arm and cast them aside as well. She reached for the left, but she had tied the knot far too tight for her shaking fingers. She gave up and let her head fall forward.

Her hair fell in her face again, the stupid bangs too short to tuck behind her ear. Irritated this time, she shook her head violently in a substitute for pushing it out of the way, the silver glint catching her eye. Turning her head, she realised it could only have been her dagger sat beside her, spilled from her pouch and cast aside with her armour and pride. Astrid stretched her unbound arm out to pick it up, her slim fingers tightening around the handle. She twirled it gently in her hand, the sharp blade swooping low, coming closer and closer to her reviled flesh. Her eyes fell back to her reflection.

"You're just as beautiful as you are intelligent." Hiccup had told her sincerely, a long time ago now. He's still stutter around her then. Maybe he'd been right. Her cheeks where fat and puffy and her ears where too large and her eyes too big, almost see through, like she could see the idiot behind them. And her hair; her stupid hair that was constantly flopping in her face and was far too bright for the overcast village she lived in.

Her mind made up, her free hand, the one that wasn't twisted around her dagger, came up to tug her thick braid loose and she tossed the hair tie to the side with her headband and armour. Her blonde hair slid from its plait, too heavy to hold itself in place without being secured.

Astrid wrapped her fingers around the thick hair and twisted it, pulling it taunt from her head. The other hand slipped the dagger between her neck and her hair and she braced herself, pulling the hair tighter so the pain would distract her from her ugly thoughts.

As beautiful as intelligent, she thought darkly as she pulled the dagger upwards, away from her neck. Yeah right.

But her arm refused to move. The dagger stopped a hair's breath from the rest of her hair and wouldn't move another inch... possibly because of the deadweight of the lanky auburn haired boy who was suddenly clinging to her arm.

"Hiccup?" She squeaked at him, her voice was cracked and too soft to snap at him the way she normally would have. She wound her fingertips tighter in her hair.

But Hiccup didn't answer her. Instead his hands slid across her arm, from her elbow to her hand, and he began to gently prise her fingers open around the knife. She didn't help him, not at all, but she caused no hindrance to his task either. When the blade fell uselessly into his grasp, Hiccup tightened his own fist around the weapon and launched it as far as his weak arm would allow him. Astrid sat frozen for a few silent moments as he turned beck to her, before she eventually allowed the hair she held in her too tight fist to fall and finally looked up to meet Hiccup's gaze.

He stared back at her and it almost made her feel sick. It was his eyes, they made him look like he was hurting, but a quick once over of the small boy told her it was not physical. It was her fault. Again.

"I've been looking for you since you left." He told her, reaching out to take her unbound hand in one of his own while the other reached out and pick up the bindings beside her. He slowly began to twist the material around her arm the way she had taught him, starting from her elbow again. He did it quicker than she would have been able to. "Well, we have actually."

"We?" She asked softly, staring down as he finished tying off the wrap, knotting it in the same complicated knot she used. She fluttered her eyes as the tears welled. She would _not_ cry in front of Hiccup, she told herself forcefully. She'd see how long that lasted.

"Toothless and I." He gestured to the midnight blue dragon sat behind him. She tilted her head. Strange, she hadn't noticed that Toothless was sitting in the clearing with then… well, she hadn't even noticed Hiccup until he'd been clinging to her arm. And Toothless was a lot bigger than Hiccup. So much for the observant warrior she was supposed to be. She turned, so the lake sat behind her now rather than in front of her, while beside her Hiccup shifted with her and began to rummage through the bag he had brought with him, strapped against Toothless' side.

Toothless crept closer, his eyes and pupils wide and docile. The large dragon led down when she was close enough and his head ended up falling across her lap, his eyes closed. Toothless' nose pressed softly against her stomach and his great, heaving breaths calming her as he snuggled in to her, almost as if he was attempted to comfort her in his own, Nightfury way. Astrid pressed her hand to his head and lent into him, hugging him tightly to her, breathing in the Dragon's warmth.

Hiccup nudged her shoulder softly with his own and when she finally pulled her head out of Toothless' neck for long enough to look up at him, he was holding out a loaf of bread and a smoked fish to her, a full drinking canteen resting across his crossed legs. His mouth twitched up at her, like he wanted to smile. "You skipped lunch." he explained with a shrug.

She took the offered food from him and sat both on the head of the dragon in front of her. If Toothless wanted her to be his pillow, he could deal with being her table. She pulled at the bread with her long fingers, ripping the loaf in half and offered the larger section to Hiccup. But the clever boy stole the smaller one from her other hand and gave her a small smile that failed to reach his eyes. She didn't like that, she decided as she sunk her teeth into her half, Hiccup's honest grins never failed to make her smile back, mainly because she like to see the boy happy. Now, even smiling, he still looked sad. She set her half eaten bread down on Toothless' back, her stomach twisting in summersaults.

"Fishlegs wanted to come find you too." He told her "He wanted to come apologise. He didn't mean it, at all. He's just stressing out about just about everything and for some reason, you where the easiest target, apparently. I think he wants to lose an eye, personally." She just grunted at him and turned back to pick at the fish, splitting the head from the rest and tugging softly at the nightfury's ear until he opened one eye and then, once he'd seen what she was offering, he opened his great mouth to accept the fish head. Lazy dragon, she hummed in amusement. "I, um, may have told him it would be better if he stayed behind." Hiccup stuttered, rubbing at his neck.

"I don't care what Fishlegs thinks about me." She told Hiccup gently, but one glance at the small boy told her he brought none of it. She sighed; dropping her eyes from his gaze, hating that Hiccup knew her better than that. "Okay, maybe I do, a little."

Hiccup touched her spine gently, as if she'd brake under his hand. She flinched away, the developing bruise on her back from one of her falls aching more than her shattered pride. But then again, her pride had long since been destroyed in front of Hiccup.

"You wanna talk about it?" He asked her, his hand resting alongside hers on Toothless' head, their thin fingers bumping together as he poked at her playfully. She let the corners of her mouth tilt up. If there was one thing Hiccup could do better than anyone else on Berk, it was make her smile.

"Not really." She shrugged. "We're Vikings. We're supposed to be immune to all sorts of… emotion. Isn't it better if we just forget this?"

"That's not what you told Snotlout." He nudged her with his shoulder, his cotton sleeve rough against her bare arm, and gave her a small smile. Toothless grumbled as he was jostled, his sleep disturbed. "Besides, what does that make me? The emotional Viking? Gee thanks Astrid." She snorted tearfully as her hand went to rub behind Toothless' right ear, leaving his on the great nightfury's head.

"I would have thought you'd be used to being the screw up by now, Hiccup." She chortled, shaking her head. She'd have been content to leave the conversation there, to lay her head against his scrawny shoulder and never talk about her small episode again. But he was Hiccup and there was no way that that would ever happen.

"Soo?" He pulled the word out and cast her back to the time long ago when they stood alone on the dock and she'd questioned how he planned to solve the mess his original meeting with Toothless had caused. He sounded so much now like she had then, that it made her jerk her head to return to the present.

"S'nothing. Just a bad day." She reconsidered "Well, bad week, actually."

Hiccup's hand left Toothless' back and he twisted away, her head leaving his shoulder as her did. He reared left, reaching out to pick her hair tie up from the floor and scooped her hair band up with it as an afterthought. Sliding the hair tie over his wrist (and dropping the headband in his lap beside the forgotten canteen), he tugged her head gently until she faced away from him.

Hiccup had never been the best braider on Berk, but she'd taught him the basics and she'd never turn down a chance to let Hiccup run his fingers through her hair.

"Trouble with your dad again?" He asked, twisting the thick strands around his fingers and around each other.

"Nah." She shook her head at him; he pulled her head straight. "My mother this time."

"Again?" Hiccup scoffed around a mouthful of the hair tie he bit down on now, having pulled it off his wrist with his teeth when said hand was free.  
She nodded. He pulled her head straight again.

"Yes." She repeated, verbally this time as he tied off his braid and led it against her back softly, mindful of the new bruise on her back this time.

She flicked her fringe from her face. "Thanks."

"Any time." He smiled happily at her and rested his hand on her bare shoulder. "What was it about? This time, I mean."

Astrid winced.

"Nothing much." She bowed her head forward. "Just the usual, you know? My size, my training schedule, Stormfly's diet, Stormfly's irritating habits, my weight… well, you get the picture."

Hiccup sighed. Of course, parental conflicts where not something that Hiccup was unused to, having spent the majority of his life in the middle of them. It was easy to forget, she realised, with the way Hiccup and Stoick where today, that they hadn't been on the best of terms until quite lately actually.

"Isn't 'my size' and 'my weight' basically the same thing?" Hiccup asked, tilting his head right in confusion. He really was like Toothless at times.

"Not according to my mother."

"Ah."

They sat in silence. It was a very Hiccup and Astrid thing to do; to simply sit together in the quite, to never let it become awkward because it never needed to be. They where both content to sit down in the peace that they never got anywhere but together.

"Okay fine." She huffed out eventually, stirring Toothless from his deep sleep. The dark blue dragon opened his eyes and looked up at her, irritated at first and then, after a good hard look, sympathetic. "You still wanna know?"

"Wanna… what? No, forget that. Tell me." He paused "Please."

Astrid raised both her eyebrows at his tone. "When did you get so demanding?" She scoffed, her own tone teasing, but when her eyebrows lowered she dropped her head. "Actually, don't worry about it. I'll be fine without talking about it. Leave it."

"Astrid!" He whinned, tipping his head back as hers went forward. "Come on. I just want to help."

"No, it doesn't matter. Go away."

"Astrid. Why do you never accept what's offered to you?" His head lifted up again, and he stared at her blue and green eyes locking fearsly, both as stubborn as the other, both angry. "I'm trying to help."

"_Haven't you helped enough, Genius_?" She snarled at him, her voice rising considerably. "_It's your fault anyway!_"

He flinched backward away from her, fully insulted and hurt. He bounced to his feet and away from her, eyes wide and sad. "Astrid?" It came out like a squeak, like a wounded baby Nadder, kicked by its mother.

"No." She whimpered unhappy, standing with him as she reached for his hand. He stepped away from her. "No Hiccup. Please. Don't do that. I'm sorry, I didn't mean that. I'm sorry. Hic-" His hand came to hers; while the other came up to cover her mouth and he tugged her closer, silencing her stuttered begging.

"You didn't mean that." He repeated back to her, and he smiled at her, surprising her greatly. "You where angry, I get it. I was just being too cheeky, I guess. Sorry."

She shook her head and gave him a weak smile. Hiccup, it seemed, was growing now. He stood just as tall as her now, yet when he stood up and stretched himself to his tallest height, he liked to kid himself that he was barely a few centimetres taller that herself. She's let him think that for now.

Now, Hiccup was in that state of mind which inspired him to do just that. He stood tall, shaking his own fringe from his face in an irritating parody of her own defiant hair. She grimaced and pushed herself up to her toes; there was no way on earth that she would let Hiccup Horrendous Haddock the third be taller than her, not yet at any rate, there would be plenty of time for that as they grew older. So, when her attempts failed, she pulled him down again, forcing him to sit with her again.

"I'm sorry." She pulled a face at him as she tucked her chin into her chest. "I never meant that, not at all."

"So," Hiccup's fingers gripped loosely at her jaw, an intense pressure that forced him to look at her and he tilted his head at her again when their eyes met. "Explain it to me."

She frowned; raising her fingers to her temple where the ach had began to set in behind her eyes as she pulled her head from his grip. Hiccup watched, wringing his hands self-consciously in his lap, and she knew that he was far too interested in what was going on inside her thick head. He was far too interested for _her_ sake anyway.

"Okay." She whispered softly, staring down at the tie of his shirt, evading the stare of his deep green eyes.

"I know what Fishlegs meant; I know I'm not as clever as you or him. I 'spose that it was just – You always told me that, well, remember that time that you told me that…" She was stuttering. Stuttering! She was Astrid Hofferson and she didn't stutter. That was Hiccup's area of expertise. She pulled all the breath she could into her lungs before she looked up. If she told him, she'd be a Viking and look him in the eye while doing it.

"Right," She let pour out in that one long breath, "You've always told me that I was pretty and that I was just as clever as I was pretty, but with Fishlegs being all, what ever the hell that was, I just started thinking that, you being you, where probably right and that I suppose that with everything else, the only thing about me that was really –" She paused here, gasping in one deep breath and considering her next word in her head. " – ignoring that fact, was my hair." She flicked her eyes skywards, fluttering away the tears. "I just wanted it to stop. The whole thing was just so much unlike a Viking, unlike what I should be… that I wanted it to go." She flinched away from the hand that reached over to touch her unclad shoulder. "Sorry."

"What's there to be sorry about?" Hiccup asked her, despite knowing that she hatred rhetorical questions. "You're allowed to have feelings you know. You're human being before you're a Viking, Astrid."

"Know that." She grumbled unhappily but allowed his fingers to graze gently over her lose plait. Finger that he probably would never would have kept if the circumstances had been different. Or maybe that was a bit extreme. He took both her hands in his, and brought one of them up to his lips, kissing the back of her hand softly. She knew that look in his eye; he was determined to do what he could to help. There was no bumbling, stuttering Hiccup.

"You _are_ smart. You _are_ beautiful, because that is what I said, not that you where merely _pretty_." He spat the word, as if it was an evil in it's self. "Both in equal measures."

"But you're not clever like Fishlegs is. It's not just information that you've packed into your brain, to be memorised and recited when and where it's needed. You have the common sense to actually look at a situation and access it. Understand it. You're an important part of the team, Astrid. We – I – need you, my second in command."

"Isn't second in command more of an army thing?" She asked softly, and it came out more like a giggle. This boy was not good for her, she decided, he was too sweet, too kind and had set about to change her entire life as she knew it. No, not good.

But then his hand cupped her chin, pulling her eyes up to his and he smiled at her lame joke, and her mind changed completely.

Her body lurched forward suddenly as a large nose shoved itself into the middle of her back, pushing her towards Hiccup. Since when did the large dragon get so very good at sneaking up on people?

"Hey!" She laughed, rocking back into her original position as the dragon eased off. Her fingers reached out and coaxed Toothless back in fount of her. He licked at her softly, and his head pressed softly into her front.

"He's glad you're not hurt." Hiccup seemed to translate for the reptile. She'd never understand the almost… telepathic like connection that Hiccup and Toothless had. It was something she hoped she and Stormfly would develop in the years ahead of them. "We, uhh, had some very unsettling predictions about what may have happened to you. We're both very glad you're safe. Physically, at least."

"And mentally to." She added, pushing her hair from her eyes. Maybe having it in her eyes constantly wasn't that much of a bad thing. It was annoying yes, but it was something she was used to, a constant at least, in the ever changing world… even something so small that it seemed almost lame. By Thor what was happening to her brain? "I'll be fine."

"You sure?" He questioned, pulling her to her feet as he stood and bending to pick up her discarded armour. She'd forgotten she had taken it off, she realised, taking it off him and she slipped it on, piece by piece. Finally buckling the skirt tightly around her waist, she looked up at the auburn haired misfit who stood beside her, his eyes gazing elsewhere and grinned. She looked like herself now, smiling and happy, armour covered and strong. She sucked in a deep breath.

And stretched over to peck him on the cheek.

"Course I'm sure." She told him, turning her back and pressed her hand into Toothless' neck. "We flying back?"

"No, I thought we might walk back." He chuckled sarcastically, swinging up onto Toothless' back and extending a hand to her as he clicked his prosthetic into place. She grinned, jumping up behind him and wrapping herself around him.

"Hiccup?"

"Yeah?"

"Thanks." She nuzzled her cold nose into his back as he Toothless set them above Berk, her cheeks flushed warm despite the freezing temperatures. "And I'm sorry. I was horrid, I shouldn't have..."

"If you say sorry once more," Hiccup cut her off, and she could practically _feel_ his grin through his back. "I'm going to get my dad to throw you off of Berk and set up a search party for the _real_ Astrid Hofferson!" She pinched him then, right in the ribs. "Ow!" Toothless rolled his eyes back at them.

She curled closer to him; the wind picked up as Toothless lead them around the outside of the small island. Hiccup was so small yet, somehow, so warm as well. Warm enough to make her feel safe enough around him, regardless of whether or not the large Nightfury was around. Although that certainly helped.

On a whim, Astrid reached out her free hand to tug her thick braid loose from the tie, wrapping it around her wrist. Maybe, just maybe, she could live with the irritating bangs.

As long as she had Hiccup there to distract her.

* * *

Ahem, sooo, I'm not dead and finally got around to posting my second ever HTTYD fic! I like this one actually, which is unusual too...

I based this off of two things; my own.. um, 'incident' with a pair of scissors, shall we call it? and Fishleg's quote from 'Worst in Show': "It doesnt take brains to teach a Terror to hide, Astrid." Which I thought was a fantastic oppertunity... so it turned into this.

IIHH xx


End file.
